As you can see, after Kennedy leaves the next to oldest Justices, by far, are liberals Ginsburg (85) and Breyer (79). So simply based on age, the next two departures are likely to be liberal Justices.

Considering the deranged and dangerous reaction to the retirement of Justice Kennedy with Trump in office, can you imagine what would happen if Ginsburg or Breyer had to leave the bench with Trump getting to nominate a replacement?

Trump replacing Ginsburg would be a particularly bitter loss for liberals.

Ginsburg is their Scalia.

I’m a little surprise by Ginsburg’s 5-year plan. My expectation was that she would retire in the summer of 2020, a presidential election year. That would motivate liberals, and would present conservatives with a test of the Merrick Garland doctrine — that a president doesn’t get a vote on a Supreme Court nomination close to a presidential election.

Retiring in the summer of 2020 would be Notorious RBG’s way of going out in style.

She has proven herself a political hack of the worse sort throughout her term. Not on every case, just on every case that advances either the Democratic Party, or a subversion of those Amendments she disagrees with, i.e. First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth. She also feels the judiciary shares executive power. She is a typical left wing loon, and unfortunately has normalized such behavior on the bench.

Consider this. Kavanaugh will be confirmed, making a Firm Five. Ruth Buzzy, who delusionally thinks she’s in charge of her life span, suffers the snip of the Abhorred Shears of Atropos, with DJT naming her replacement (yes, the Senate will remain GOP). Breyer, longing to spend his final days eating Breyers® Ice Cream with his grandkids and realizing that he will now be facing a Solid Six, responds to the loss of the Buzz, by crying, “What’s the use; I can no longer effectively legislate from the bench,” and resigns. The Don goes into action, and the Solid Six becomes the Solid Seven.

Then, in late 2022 or mid 2023, Thomas & Alito, each of whom will by then will be in his mid-70s, come to DJT (yes, there will be a second term), announce their retirements, and ask the Don to replace them with people in the mold of Scalia so long as each replacement is in his/her mid-40s. In time Roberts does the same, though he’ll be coming to Mike Pence. The Solid Seven remains solid for decades.

That is best case scenario. I agree that Trump is the favorite in 2020; 8 years in, 8 years out is becoming a political norm. Assuming the Democrats have a decent bench by 2024, he’ll be followed by a Democrat. If not… it may very well be Pence, unless he and his wife have had enough of D.C. politics. At that point, who knows… Haley? She could be our Thatcher.

Haley is no Thatcher, my goodness, research her more than her 5 minutes at the UN. She’s a Romney Client, bought and sold. Witness the 2016 election, her neverTrumpism-until-Trump-gave-her-a-job, and her repeatedly questioning her boss while in office.

When Romney gets to the Senate 🙁 Haley will get bolder in her bucking of POTUS, you heard it here first. But you are correct, that she wants to be POTUS herself, but I think she’s counting on Romney’s Operation to get her there, e.g., see Romney Client/Niece Ronna McDaniels in place as head of the RNC. IMIO (in my informed opinion)

Presidents can’t just “expand” the size of the USSC. To do so requires Congress to amend 28 U.S. Code § 1’s stated number from nine to fifteen (along with an appropriation for the new justices). No simple matter. Equally messy will be the whole nomination process.

Not unless that president carried both houses with her, including a filibuster-proof majority in the senate. And even that won’t help if she wants to impeach judges; she’d need 2/3 of the senate, all willing to go along with such a radical position. Not going to happen. Not even 0bama at his height had 2/3 of the senate.

If she can hang on for five years. My thoughts are that Thomas would prefer to be followed by an associate justice of similar judicial philosophy; he may retire sooner than we think. If re-elected, Trump could very well get 3 more opportunities during his Presidency.

The Left’s hysteria that will accompany Trump’s opportunity to replace any of the 4 Democrat appointees will like nothing we have ever seen.

I believe Thomas has made some mentions of thoughts of retiring, but I could be wrong.

I thought Ginsberg had pancreatic cancer, which is usually among the worst areas to get cancer as it spreads quickly, I think she also had colon cancer, which may be way the pancreatic cancer was found early. Still, the threat of the disease is there. She might not make it another 5 years.

I fully expect the left to go, well normal mode for them is near insanity, full bore insane (a short trip), when really the only one I am not sure of to adhere to the Constitution is Roberts. So, she is likely already relegated to dissenting status for a lot of cases once Kennedy is replaced.

Hopefully the Democrats will not gain any significant numbers in Congress, while I would extremely happy if the R’s pick up a bit, and that would help push through these judge appointments.

I think Ginsberg just loves having her slice of power and won’t give it up unless she has her gavel pried from her cold dead fingers.

True. but she did have surgery for pancreatic cancer, and it was claimed to have been caught early. She had surgery for colon cancer as well, and didn’t miss any time on the bench (though it’s hard to know how much of that time was napping).

I was puzzled when I heard of her having pancreatic cancer a while ago, yet she stayed in the Court. It’s been a while now since that was reported, so I guess she beat the odds. I know pancreatic cancer is among the worst types, which is because it usually metastasizes to almost every area of the body. Maybe due to her earlier colon cancer she was screened more regularly and it led to finding the pancreatic cancer sooner. It was described as a stage 1 cancer.

Just curious — what happens if, God forbid, a SC Justice falls into a coma or worse, a vegetative state from which they will never recover? How long can they hold their seat while technically alive yet completely incapacitated? Imagine that legal fight.

No doubt. She’s slowly approaching room temperature already. It might be awhile before we discover she has passed (when she does…); I wouldn’t put it past her law clerk loyalists to prop her up like in the film “Weekend at Bernie’s”.

Interesting question, I wonder if the SCOTUS would rule on that… well, not really, but it would seem to be a medical issue which leftists would be allowed to remain and those who rule using the Constitution as the main guide would be removed. I wonder if it would be similar to what they would do for POTUS though there is a succession plan for POTUS which couldn’t be followed by a justice.

We had a Chief Justice appointed by Washington (didn’t know the man was crazy) finally convinced to retire after a year. Had several others who were either mentally ill or senile and refused to retire. One was finally convinced to retire and just a day or two before he was set to retire Chief Justice Chase used his vote to strike down a major Federal statute. One Associate Justice wouldn’t retire because he didn’t have enough time for a pension. Congress passed a special act granting him a pension and he retired.

They are on the Court for Life, “good behavior” or until they decide to retire.

Well, if it’s one of the lefties (G,B,S,K), who cares. The important votes will simply be 5-3, not 5-4. If one of the good guys, then being in a coma will be deemed “not good behavior,” and impeachment will follow, with the Don then given another USSC appointment.

Some justices will hang on like grim death until well past their prime. Back in the 1960s–or maybe the early 1970s, there was an aging and senescent justice on the California State Supreme Court. He was in ill healht, falling asleep on the bench etc, and not contributing anything to performance of the court’s duties. But he would not resign The man had had a long and relatively distinguished career on that State Supreme Court—but he had now “ost it”. The State Judicial Council instituted proceedings to have him removed “for cause’. Some of the testimony included and incident where he had stepped up to the urinal in the men’s room and let fly as it were. It was a rainy day in San Francisco and he was wearing a raincoat, which he didn’t bother to open–so there were “golden showers” inside his raincoat and all over his suit. That and several other similar instances was enough to get the job done. But requiring that sort of public testimony was humiliating to the old gentleman. Of course if the notorious RBG can get away with Depends she might make that five year goal.

Reading your post reminded me of a story about President Lyndon Baines Johnson. It may have been in the biography by Doris Kearns Goodwin. At his ranch in Texas, he was taking a leak, and the wind blew it onto the pant leg of a secret service agent standing nearby. The secret service agent said,
‘”G*d d*mn it, Mr President, watch where you’re p*ssing!”
The President replied, “That’s executive privilege, son.”

a test of the Merrick Garland doctrine — that a president doesn’t get a vote on a Supreme Court nomination close to a presidential election.

No, that’s not the Garland Doctrine. The Doctrine is that a Lame Duck president, who will definitely be replaced by somebody in the near future (i.e., a couple of months), has no grounds to demand that the Senate confirm his nominee. There’s nothing wrong with Congress leaving the seat unoccupied for that short time until the new President arrives. The “advice and consent of the Senate” doesn’t have a time schedule attached.

So it would be pointless for Ginsburg to pretend to be conscious and alert until 2020, because that won’t be the end of Trump’s tenure. Unless she can hang on until something close to 2024, and the other Justices don’t tire of pretending that an increasingly vague RGB is present and ticking, she won’t be able to agitate for the next President to select another nasty old bat to continue her dismal legacy.

She should have retired when Bama could appoint someone just like her—though I’m sure she never considered any such thing.

Even what you describe isn’t the real policy.
The real policy is: the Senate can hold up any nomination for as long as it doesn’t cause them to lose their seats. If that means 10 years because the population has become tolerant of shenanigans, then for the next 10 years there will be a vacancy.

A couple of years before we got into the 2016 campaign liberals were putting pressure on Ginsburg to resign back then so Obama could name her replacement, but she wanted to do no such thing. Should Ginsburg have resigned? Hey, it’s her lifetime appointment. Easy for others to want to use her crowning lifetime achievement as their political football. But those liberals knew what we all ought to know: Since Truman, with the exception of Reagan to Bush, the American electorate only gives the in-party 8 years, before switching to the other side. Their problem in 1988 was that Dukakis was a terrible candidate. They were doing their best to whistle past the graveyard, thinking Hillary would beat Trump in 2016.

If something happens to Ginsburg while Trump is in office, and Trump makes a replacement appointment, especially if it’s one the liberals really they don’t like, there will be violence in the streets. Folks may think that’s hyperbole and an exaggeration, but I live in Portland, and I see up close and personal how crazy these crazies are.

The rule about the in-party getting 8 years before switching to the other side likely holds true for Republicans in 2024. We’re going to need as many conservative Supreme Court justices as we can get going forward from there.

Reagan and Bush would likely have been a 16 year record had Perot not run. Perot took the votes from Bush, which I believe was about 18%, which would have been enough for G.H.W.Bush to get two terms. Clinton got about 43%, Bush about 37%. Even if Bush only got about 10% of Perot voters, it would have caused more states to go to Bush over Clinton. Perot broke off from the Republican party, but while I think he was serious in his efforts, I always wondered if he was a set up from the Democrats to split the right leaning votes.

If RBG dies before the five years is up and Trump gets to name her replacement, the NYT and CNN already have the stories written: “Trump Colludes with the Russians Again!” Or is still colluding or something. The stage is set.

Even if there are no suspicious circumstance surrounding her death, the leftists will claim Trump killed her with his bare hands or some such thing. I wonder if RBG would not have an autopsy performed, like Scalia, and a speedy cremation…

James 4:13-15. “Come now ye that say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city, and spend a year there, and buy and sell and get gain…” — As if future events were in your own power, and your health and life was assured to you for a certain time; “whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow…” — whether your spirit before then shall not have passed into eternity; “for what is your life? It is even a vapour…” — An unsubstantial, uncertain, and fleeting vapour; “that appeareth for a little time and then suddenly vanisheth away…” — And is seen here no more forever.

“Retiring in the summer of 2020 would be Notorious RBG’s way of going out in style.”

The only problem with this statement is that the Left has lost their ablitiy to control the masses through the media and are very fearful that the People might choose a Conservative or some other enemy of liberalism. Thank God!

Browsing the internet, I see that 29.8 % of women suffer from dementia at age 85, and that goes up to 45% by age 90.
That reduces the probability that she serves until age 90 and is not removed due to dementia prior to that date is

I also see the Democrats in the same place they were with Reagan and giving the public no sane choice from Progressism in 2024 and giving Republicans a third term till 2029. She won’t outlast if the Democrats don’t move to the center which they won’t be able to during Trump’s terms. TDS is baked in and can’t be reversed till after 2024.

Is there precedent for removing scj from bench if incompetent or unable to function?
I hope she’s proud of that picture. It will probably go down as her finest accomplishment and be on every article about her forever.

Unless Ruth Buzzy Ginsberg has a direct line to God to know, she’s been whisling past the grave for a very long time and I doubt she’ll make to the end of President Trump’s second term or even his first.

Think I’ll join the chorus of “we’ll see if she lasts that long.” Given her past health issues and her age I wouldn’t really be surprised to see a headline in the next couple of years that reads “Ginsburg dead at 8X, passed peacefully in her sleep.”

Not at all. The principle McConnell announced in 2016 was that the people should decide. The people will have the same opportunity to have their say in 2020 that they did in 2016.

But whom are we kidding? If the opportunity comes up in 2020, the senate majority will do whatever it likes. That’s the only real principle here. In 2016 the majority decided to give the people a say; in 2020 it might decide otherwise.